Most incredible melding of brilliant minds... Wasted
Pros
Line Workers: The line workers were the most brilliant people that I have ever worked with. They were people from all walks of life, and together, we could do... Anything... It feels like the original Maana sales pitches included asking the customer if we could solve their hardest problems... And we would... And it would be a JAM SESSION where'd be STOKED to work 80-100+ hours a week to pull off the impossible. We would put together solutions that were cutting edge in their time and made us a clear threat to the AI SAS players that still exist today. Nothing would get us more excited than beating out a company that is 2000x our size and then find out that they started adding slides about us in their sales collateral. I will forever love and be connected to these people... We fought in the trenches together... And to be crystal clear, not one of these human beings are with Maana today. Career: Nearly everybody I've spoken to doubled their compensation and caught up on their career progression after leaving Maana. In terms of being that needed stepping stone to brilliance, Maana checks that box in a weird and abusive way.
Cons
Management/Executives: Worst management team... Ever... Nothing I have ever read of or experienced will match the dysfunction that stems from this management team. The brilliant and badly needed visionary leaders departed early on and left behind a bog of incompetence and strife. Poor leadership decisions by sales, platform, or services were ALWAYS blamed on the defenseless line workers. Technical decisions in the platform seethed of ego... Decisions that freshman computer science majors would know to be mistakes but a team of people with 50+ years combined experience in technical leadership decided that would be the way. Executive escalations due to unhappy customers stemming from these poor technical decisions became adventures in fabricating the reality that the executives wanted to hear or damning would be the consequences. Non-existent bonuses or raises unless you kissed the ring in a way that was deeply abusive to your peers. Nothing built trust like living out Lord of the Flies and having the team brown-noser fabricate whatever deeply-disconnected reality that leadership wanted to hear, including which line worker could be thrown under the bus for issues that stemmed from leadership. Leadership's way to reinvigorate the staff was to direct money into an office remodel, instead of raises or bonuses, and then get upset with the staff when the office remodel failed to turn around moral. What makes me sad deep down, is that this leadership team have the billion dollar idea... And squandered that opportunity in the same way the town drunk keeps getting into car accidents... Only the town drunk starts to sober up when the car accident starts to affect families.
